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Walden Two (Hackett Classics)
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About the Author
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-1990), regarded by many as the most important and influential psychologist since Freud, earned his doctorate in psychology at Harvard University in 1931. Following appointments at the University of Minnesota and Indiana University, he returned to Harvard in 1948. He remained there for the rest of his career, retiring in 1974 as Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology.
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Product details
Series: Hackett Classics
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.; Reprint edition (July 15, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0872207781
ISBN-13: 978-0872207783
Product Dimensions:
5.2 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.0 out of 5 stars
73 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#35,349 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
"I accuse you of one of the most diabolical machinations in the history of mankind!"So begins Skinner's strawman attack on his own theory of radical behaviorism, as expounded in his pseudo-ficitonal Walden Two. I say pseudo-fiction because, while the story is set in a fictional commune or colony set up along the lines of his ideas, the story is really just a literary device to express and illustrate the workings of his theory. The book is about the theory, not about the fictional setting or characters, and its purpose is to examine the question of what the world would be like if his theory were to be followed in practice.Behaviorism has its roots in the positivism of the late 19th century, which sought to understand the world in terms of observable phenomena, and dispose of metaphysical theory and speculation as scientifically worthless -- if it isn't verifiable by experiment, then it doesn't exist, or at least doesn't matter. The fact that positivism is itself unverifiable and therefore self-referentially incoherent did as little to deter its dedicated followers at the time, as it does to deter those today who continue to believe that science is some sort of ultimate truth, even though that "truth" can never be scientifically verified.That positivism found its way into psychology in the form of behaviorist theory, which seeks to understand psychology solely on the basis of observable phenomena -- behavior, in other words. The causes of that behavior are to be found the history and environment (and, in modern versions, genetic makeup, and brain anatomy and chemistry) of the individual, all of which are amenable to verifiable observation. This is in contrast to the psychoanalysis of Freud and the analytical psychology of Jung, among other theories, which understand observable behavior as a symptom or consequence of an underlying mental structure that is otherwise inaccessible. To the behaviorist, ideas like "mind," "soul," and "consciousness" are at best relics of a bygone age of mysticism and muddled and misguided thinking, unnecessary in the "enlightened" world of science, and at worst delusional and dysfunctional, and in either case "scientifically" unverifiable and therefore serving no worthwhile purpose.One of the claims of behaviorism, and particularly the "radical behaviorism" that Skinner expounds, is that much of what is wrong in the world (or what the behaviorist sees as "wrong") comes from these outdated and "unscientific" ways of looking at human psychology, and by discarding these outmoded ideas and focusing on behavior rather than thought, feeling, and consciousness, the world could be made into a better place. To ask the question, then, of what a behaviorist world would be like, is therefore to ask the question of what a world without mind, soul or consciousness would be like. This is the purpose of Walden Two -- to create, albeit fictionally, such a mindless and soul-less world, and examine how such a world would work, and what living in it would, or could, be like.What it does not examine is whether such a world is sustainable. Whether such a world could exist within the confines of a fictional community situated in an otherwise non-behaviorist word is one thing; whether a world organized solely upon those principles could survive is quite another thing.Behaviorism argues that concepts like mind, soul and consciousness are just artifacts of social behavior; there is no "self", no "mind", and so forth; these things are really just illusions produced by the social environment, and are there only to facilitate one's integration into a social setting. Inquiring into these ideas any further than that is simply worthless speculation. "Self" and "individual" exist only as particularizations of the social "we", and have no independent existence on their own -- they are mental images of a person's place in the social order, and are there only to understand how one fits into a society. Because of these claims, behaviorism dovetails rather well with a kind of social conservatism that leads toward social engineering and behavioral control. If the individual exists only as a subset of the group, then control over the indivdual by the group is necessary and justified since the group is the basis of the individual's existence. It is the obligation of the individual, therefore, to serve and obey the group, because without the group there is no individual, and what threatens the group is a threat to all of its member.And here the dragon awakens. Behaviorism, taken to this extreme, begins to sound a lot like the "bicameral mind" of Julian Jaynes. It could be argued that behaviorism in fact represents a kind of reversion to the mental state of the bicameral mind, a neurologically driven psychological state whose purpose in evolution was the development of social order, but like many evolutionary developments, eventually became maladaptive -- that is, it became destructive to the very thing it arose to accomplish. The reasons for this are legion, having mostly to do with the inability of group-thinking to deal with environmental contingenies -- unexpected, or willfully ignored, situations and events that threaten human physical survival. It turns out that consciousness, and ideas like "mind", "soul", and "individual" appeared in evolution as a response to the catastrophic destruction wrought by the bicameral mind and the societies founded upon it. The kind of world that behaviorism seeks to create is not new, but has been done before, and has suffered destruction and annihilation every time it has appeared in history. Looked at from the standpoint of evolution, the psychological "I" is an advancement beyond the neurological "we", and if this is so, then behaviorism, and the world it envisions, are as rotten to their core as the illogic upon which they rest.The real problem here is that behaviorism is far form dead; it is very much alive in social engineering (think "Facebook") and, more worrying, in the form of "behavioral medicine", which seeks not to find the causes of suffering in the psychology of the individual, but rather to push them out of the way by "normalizing" one's brain chemistry -- "normal", of course, being understood as what is socially acceptable, not individually unique. All but gone are the theories and methods of Freud and Jung, replaced by socially engineered "internet experiences", mindless stupidity like "yoga classes", and pharmacologically re-designed brain function. The mind is not the brain, anymore than your telephone is the conversations you have with it, but if you cut the wires, the conversations do not happen. Cut the wires in the brain, chemically or otherwise, and the conversations necessary for the mind to function go silent. The "I" sinks back into the "we", and thousands of years of human evolution are for naught. Children smile and behave in class, but at the price of whatever uniqueness they may have had to contribute being flushed down the toilet of obedience. And that kind of uniqueness is just what consciousness was evolved for -- to find new ways of thinking that get beyond the closed-mindedness of the group.It gets worse. Like any other psychic process, when consciousness and the self are either repressed by social pressures or suppressed by chemical manipulation, they don't disappear -- they recede into the unconscious, where, unchecked by rational thought and moral examination, they grow in strength against their oppressors and morph into destructive powers that emerge with the force of the dragon's flame they have become. Want proof? As Joseph Campbell once said, "Read the newspapers." What you see in those newspapers is in fact the result of mental illness, but not the illness of any particular individual -- it is the illness of a culture that has sunk into the pre-conscious bicameral mind.If any of this is right or even close to it, then behaviorism, and the modern theories and practices that it has mutated into, are indeed, " the most diabolical machinations in the history of mankind." It is impossible to go into all of the arguments that back up this position here; this is, after all, a review of Skinner's book. But a review of a book on theory has every reason to examine the consequences of that theory, and what behaviorism has become today, and what its practical offspring have wrought in the world, are a far cry from what Skinner envisioned decades ago.You may or may not believe or accept what has been said here. So be it. Read the book: despite its age, what it says underlies so much of what has become commonplace that a critical understanding of the world and its events requires a familiarity with the ideas that shaped the world as it stands, and behaviorism is one of them. Read the book, think it through, and ask yourself one question:Do you really want to get on that train?
Very didactic. Contrived. Interesting ideas, but a struggle to plow through with a sudden change of heart of the narrator that has no real explanation.
I bought this book as extended background for a writing project involving Skinner's book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, and political behaviorism in general. I found it immensely boring, insufferably tendentious, and politically terrifying.The basic theme of the book is that the world would be a better place if we would all give up the modern way of life and join small rural collectivist societies.In common with all utopian exercises, it makes assumptions about human nature which are simply not true. Distinguished from most utopian collectivist exercises, it pretends to be based on individual freedom. As a fictional expression of Skinner's behaviorist theories, it holds that humans can be re-trained to respond in predictable and desirable ways to external stimuli. In the end it all comes down to everyone accepting the mastership of the enlightened leader. Free will, freedom of choice, is gone. “Behavioral Engineering†irons out all negative emotions. The entire system is built on a process of control – ostensibly self control - but everyone is always satisfied and complacent. Anyone who does not slavishly fall in line with the program is disposed of.In a number of places throughout the early chapters I felt disgusted, but I broke out in a rage when I hit Chapter 12, about the nursery. Babies kept in a sterile environment protected from any physical or emotional challenges, mothers may come once in awhile to see how their babies were getting along, but the hugs and bonding and emotional development were a community project. Children grew up in dormitories, into their teen years, apart from their families and conditioned by peer pressure rather than by adult input. “Home is not the place to raise children.†(p. 132) A mechanistic behaviorist way of looking at the world very much in line with the teaching of Karl Marx, intended to destroy the sense of family and marriage in favor of a herd mentality where any babies born were the property of the state to be reared in a manner to advance the agenda of the collective – reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s book: “It Takes a Village.†Contrary to Skinner’s collectivist “progressive†mentality, mothers and fathers are still important – mothers especially in the first two years of a child’s life. Skinner makes plain his belief that weakening the parent-child relationship enhances the ability of the collective to maintain its control over the members of the community.Page 241 he gets directly to the point: “If man is free, then a technology of behavior is impossible …. I deny that freedom exists at all.†The aim of positive reinforcement is to make people feel free when they are actually reacting mechanically to a scientific technique. In sum, the book is a ham-handed effort to make sneaky despotism look good. People fooled into thinking they are free are actually not free at all.
Skinner had to agree to write a textbook for the publishers in order to get them to publish this. He should have stuck to nonfiction.
This book is mostly exposition with not a lot of story. Skinner explains what he believes will constitute the ideal society through one of the characters, the founder of Walden 2, named Frazier, as several other characters are given a tour of the commune over several days. Maybe Skinner's ideas might be successful, but I don't know of anyone who has tried to put them into practice. The main idea appears to be that the individual becomes responsible for the success of the commune, and whatever is good for the welfare of the commune is good for the individual. Contrast this 'novel' with 'The Blithedale Romance', by Nathaniel Hawthorne, another novel about life in a commune, but told from the perspective of a character that becomes a member of the commune and not just an observer.
Psychology major here and although this book is not under my required reading. I thought it was an important enough book to read. It is defiantly as debatable and controversial today as it was in it first was published. Very thought provoking.
Skinner's "Walden Two" made me want to leave my current existence and move to such a utopian society. The book paints a picture of a pretty much ideal life based upon the behavioral psychological theories that were current in the field of psychology at the time. The book is interesting, well written and will be read quickly as it is hard to put down. The book arrived in pristine condition and in a timely manner. I am a very happy customer!
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